Born in Los Angeles to a first generation Chicano from El Paso, and a ‘white’ Jewish girl from NYC) and am proud to be such a Xicano. I’m descended from Indians and Romanians and there’s a splash of Killer Robot blended in and it all makes for a delicious family crest. And just so it’s clear, I do not always look like the above foto. Sometimes I look like this. But usually, I am pretty sexy, it’s true.

Anyway.

This blog began with very specific purpose. It was about Mexican Pride, self-love, Xicano Power!

Because in too many places in this land—the USA—in which I’ve grown, it is understood if not spoken that All Things Mexican are inferior in some special way. I have lived in many of these places, and that’s most places in the country as far as I’ve seen. It’s everywhere a television can be found, at least.

This is not one of those places. This is a place that does not subscribe to the racist and anti-indigenous spin too often produced or propped up by USA media outlets and government agents who want to obscure the hand of the USA in both the world’s history as well as related to Mexico’s current conditions. This is a place where we take care to outline the interconnected roles and systems that wed colonizer and colonized; conqueror and oppressed; dominant and not-dominant, empire and those in the shadow of the empire; elites and peasants, and our own participation in the entire carnival.

I do want to make it clear that I am not here to pretend to be a voice for those who now live in Mexico or for those who come here (to the USA) directly from Mexico. Theirs is a different culture and framework and experience. So I can’t speak for them, but I will stand by and with them, given the chance, or where an opportunity might present itself.

Words are dangerous, especially so many. We hear different things, see different things. You attempt to define too long and you rule out any sense of breath and sway and shift, all those things that everything is made of. Yet some words are too broad. The word “liberal” or the word “left” or the word “progressive.” I’m afraid I don’t know what they mean in too many cases.

What I write about here is simpler. And aside from my thoughts, and even then, it is about my life. What life is like in this society for someone who identifies as I do, what my life has been like here, what it has meant to me, how it has affected me, and how that inspires me to act now. I do what anyone out here writing does, I hope. I try to be honest about what I’m saying, keeping in mind that we change all the time, and at times, even a day old post can be about as right as an outright lie.